Hi everyone in the Cafe Saxophone.
My husband and I have been trying to learn alto sax for two or three years on and off and have not been able to spend anywhere near as much time as we'd like on practising. We had a teacher for the first few months but she gave up teaching (were we as bad as that?) and we've just carried on learning new pieces from CD tuition books.
We now have a lot more time on our hands, unfortunately, having both been made redundant and are trying to spend it doing something we really love - oh and practising the sax, too. But we only seem to have reached a plateau and we now need to consider 1) whether we try to invest in finding a teacher and 2) whether we invest in a new sax. We each bought a sax online from, apparently, a virtually unknown manufacturer, Freemantle, (recommended by our teacher) which seemed to suit us as heavy handed beginners. We took one of the saxes to John Packer in Taunton for a good going over but they were clearly not impressed with the quality and did their best to get it into good shape. The tone of both the saxes just seems to be deteriorating, the keys occasionally stick and we now don't know if it's us or the saxes which are getting worse.
So, Cafe people, please advise me. Should we invest in a better sax and share one between us? Bearing in mind that we are both unemployed, finances are extremely tight but trying to learn the sax is one of the most pleasurable things we have left, so we would really like to do better at it.
I'm sure you'll all say get a teacher - but which comes first - the instrument or the tuition?
Would love to hear from you.
My husband and I have been trying to learn alto sax for two or three years on and off and have not been able to spend anywhere near as much time as we'd like on practising. We had a teacher for the first few months but she gave up teaching (were we as bad as that?) and we've just carried on learning new pieces from CD tuition books.
We now have a lot more time on our hands, unfortunately, having both been made redundant and are trying to spend it doing something we really love - oh and practising the sax, too. But we only seem to have reached a plateau and we now need to consider 1) whether we try to invest in finding a teacher and 2) whether we invest in a new sax. We each bought a sax online from, apparently, a virtually unknown manufacturer, Freemantle, (recommended by our teacher) which seemed to suit us as heavy handed beginners. We took one of the saxes to John Packer in Taunton for a good going over but they were clearly not impressed with the quality and did their best to get it into good shape. The tone of both the saxes just seems to be deteriorating, the keys occasionally stick and we now don't know if it's us or the saxes which are getting worse.
So, Cafe people, please advise me. Should we invest in a better sax and share one between us? Bearing in mind that we are both unemployed, finances are extremely tight but trying to learn the sax is one of the most pleasurable things we have left, so we would really like to do better at it.
I'm sure you'll all say get a teacher - but which comes first - the instrument or the tuition?
Would love to hear from you.